How five entrepreneurs, all in their 40s, went from mostly nothing to success in a province that has traditionally ranked low on China's developmental charts

Fondness for tea - both drinking and serving guests, casual clothing and making millions of yuan a year are a few traits common to four men and a woman in Guizhou.

They started their businesses in the 1990s and the decade after with incomes from driving taxis or planting saplings or scouring media offices for advertisements.